This is primitive but works fine. I drew up DXF for a simple 3 jaw chuck and used concentric studs for the bearings on the spindle. A nema 23 about 570 oz for drive and hooked to the controller for the X axis. It will need to be recalibrated for each size tube/pipe but simple to do. I have about $100. in it I may cut something in the morning. I think tea-lights made for thin wall tube would look great I used a section of 3.5” EMT for the test.

When I built the table it had a parking area for the torch that is about 12" so the table is a 4X4 (water table size) but is about 5' for the X axis.With the rotary assembly on the table I still can cut any where on the water table. My home/limit switches are still at the end of travel and outside of the rotary assembly end.

nice diy tube cutterif interested... google longworth chuck plans, you may be able to use a modified version of one if your using mach3 there is a rotary version that calibrates to the tube size automaticallyor if your using autocad you could scale one axis instead of recalibrating for each diameter

First cut today here is the video of it. Forgot to use inside offset so the pierce is visible on some letters in the still pictures.3.5" EMT tube 0.080" thick 170 IPM 43 amps fine tip feather touch (CandCNC) Hypertherm PM65 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDO9sx8NiPA

i believe the mach3 rotary plasma that i use has become pipe wizardpipe wizard has only been out a few mths, my table is a little olderour screen capture looks similar to this but without the pipe wizard text

my understanding is pipe wizard can be used as a stand alone tube cope programi convert dxf files in sheetcam with a rotary post processor

Thank's Ogre I tried using the pipe wizard / rotary programs; Everything worked flawless but the torch, would not fire Went with the sheetcam rotary processor and used the normal Eithercut program and it did. I have only used it for 1 Cope program it worked very well 40 times.

Will try someday to cut something that goes more then one direction and see what the backlash does with this set up.I have No Idea how to compensate for it anyone have any experience with that?PPL rotary set up.

i noticed your using emt tube which is galvanized and gives off nasty poisonous fumesif you have a good exhaust fan it may not be an issueor you could go with exhaust tube, it's available up to 6''

if the slag on the inside is a problem for you...we do mostly exhaust copes and holes in 2.5'' and 3'' stainless tubethe slag build up on the inside of the tube was unacceptable and made for bad slip jointsi setup an aquarium pump on one of the 120 volt outputs to run water from the table inside the tubeslag on the inside of the tube has been virtually eliminatedi add a m08 command in the g-code to turn the ''coolant'' pump on

I agree about galvanized it was just what was handy I had plenty of ventilation when I cut it. I was not manning the camera for the video I also have a tube for the spindle so I could run water through it too just did not have it set up yet.

Looks awesome, thats going to be my next project for my table too, i made provisions in the build for the extra axis, drive, motor, psu etc, but hadn't even started to figure out how to do it yet, acourtjester to the rescue again........thanks Tom, there may very well be questions!